tiktok

TikTok users “absolutely justified” for fearing MAGA makeover, experts say

censorship, Donald Trump, First Amendment, Jeffrey Epstein, Policy, tiktok / Paul Patrick / January 27, 2026

Spectacular coincidence or obvious censorship?

TikTok’s tech issues abound as censorship fears drive users to delete app.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

TikTok wants users to believe that errors blocking uploads of anti-ICE videos or direct messages mentioning Jeffrey Epstein are due to technical errors—not the platform seemingly shifting to censor content critical of Donald Trump after he hand-picked the US owners who took over the app last week.

However, experts say that TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified, whether the bugs are to blame or not.

Ioana Literat, an associate professor of technology, media, and learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied TikTok’s politics since the app first shot to popularity in the US in 2018. She told Ars that “users’ fears are absolutely justified” and explained why the “bugs” explanation is “insufficient.”

“Even if these are technical glitches, the pattern of what’s being suppressed reveals something significant,” Literat told Ars. “When your ‘bug’ consistently affects anti-Trump content, Epstein references, and anti-ICE videos, you’re looking at either spectacular coincidence or systems that have been designed—whether intentionally or through embedded biases—to flag and suppress specific political content.”

TikTok users are savvy, Literat noted, and what’s being cast as “paranoia” about the app’s bugs actually stems from their “digital literacy,” she suggested.

“They’ve watched Instagram suppress Palestine content, they’ve seen Twitter’s transformation under Musk, they’ve experienced shadow-banning and algorithmic suppression, including on TikTok prior to this,” Literat said. “So, their pattern recognition isn’t paranoia, but rather digital literacy.”

Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of technology ethics and internet law at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agreed that TikTok’s “bugs” explanation wasn’t enough to address users’ fears. She told CNN that TikTok risks losing users’ trust the longer that errors damage the perception of the app.

“Even if this isn’t purposeful censorship, does it matter? In terms of perception and trust, maybe,” Fiesler told CNN.

Some users are already choosing to leave TikTok. A quick glance at the TikTok subreddit shows many users grieving while vowing to delete the app, Literat pointed out, though some are reportedly struggling to delete accounts due to technical issues. Even with some users blocked from abandoning their accounts, however, “the daily average of TikTok uninstalls are up nearly 150 percent in the last five days compared to the last three months,” data analysis firm Sensor Tower told CNN.

A TikTok USDS spokesperson told Ars that US owners have not yet made any changes to the algorithm or content moderation policies. So far, the only changes have been to the US app’s terms of use and privacy policy, which impacted what location data is collected, how ads are targeted, and how AI interactions are monitored.

For TikTok, the top priority appears to be fixing the bugs, which were attributed to a power outage at a US data center. A TikTok USDS spokesperson told NPR that TikTok is also investigating the issue where some users can’t talk about Epstein in DMs.

“We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues,” TikTok’s spokesperson said.

TikTok’s response came after California governor Gavin Newsom declared on X that “it’s time to investigate” TikTok.

“I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content,” Newsom said. His post quote-tweeted an X user who shared a screenshot of the error message TikTok displayed when some users referenced Epstein and joked, “so the agreement for TikTok to sell its US business to GOP-backed investors was finalized a few days ago,” and “now you can’t mention Epstein lmao.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the results of TikTok’s investigation into the “Epstein” issue were not publicly available, but TikTok may post an update here as technical issues are resolved.

“We’ve made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner,” TikTok USDS’s latest statement said. “However, the US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content. We’re committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We’ll continue to provide updates.”

TikTokers will notice subtle changes, expert says

For TikTok’s new owners, the tech issues risk confirming fears that Trump wasn’t joking when he said he’d like to see TikTok be tweaked to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Because of this bumpy transition, it seems likely that TikTok will continue to be heavily scrutinized once the USDS joint venture officially starts retraining the app on US data. As the algorithm undergoes tweaks, frequent TikTok users will likely be the first to pick up on subtle changes, especially if content unaligned with their political views suddenly starts appearing in their feeds when it never did before, Literat suggested.

Literat has researched both left- and right-leaning TikTok content. She told Ars that although left-leaning young users have for years loudly used the app to promote progressive views on topics like racial justice, gun reforms, or climate change, TikTok has never leaned one way or the other on the political spectrum.

Consider Christian or tradwife TikTok, Literat suggested, which grew huge platforms on TikTok alongside leftist bubbles advocating for LGBTQ+ rights or Palestine solidarity.

“Political life on TikTok is organized into overlapping sub-communities, each with its own norms, humor, and tolerance for disagreement,” Literat said, adding that “the algorithm creates bubbles, so people experience very different TikToks.”

Literat told Ars that she wasn’t surprised when Trump suggested that TikTok would be better if it were more right-wing. But what concerned her most was the implication that Trump viewed TikTok “as a potential propaganda apparatus” and “a tool for political capture rather than a space for authentic expression and connection.”

“The historical irony is thick: we went from ‘TikTok is dangerous because it’s controlled by the Chinese government and might manipulate American users’ to ‘TikTok should be controlled by American interests and explicitly aligned with a particular political agenda,’” Literat said. “The concern was never really about foreign influence or manipulation per se—it was about who gets to do the influencing.”

David Greene, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which fought the TikTok ban law, told Ars that users are justified in feeling concerned. However, technical errors or content moderation mistakes are nearly always the most likely explanations for issues, and there’s no way to know “what’s actually happening.” He noted that lawmakers have shaped how some TikTok users view the app after insisting that they accept that China was influencing the algorithm without providing evidence.

“For years, TikTok users were being told that they just needed to follow these assumptions the government was making about the dangers of TikTok,” Greene said. And “now they’re doing the same thing, making these assumptions that it’s now maybe some content policy is being done either to please the Trump administration or being controlled by it. We conditioned TikTok users to basically to not have trust in the way decisions were made with the app.”

MAGA tweaks risks TikTok’s “death by a thousand cuts”

TikTok USDS likely wants to distance itself from Trump’s comments about making the app more MAGA. But new owners have deep ties with Trump, including Larry Ellison, the chief technology officer of Oracle, whom some critics suggest has benefited more than anyone else from Trump’s presidency. Greene noted that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a key investor in Silver Lake. Both firms now have a 15 percent stake in the TikTok USDS joint venture, as well as MGX, which also seems to have Trump ties. CNBC reported MGX used the Trump family cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial, to invest $2 billion in Binance shortly before Trump pardoned Binance’s CEO from money laundering charges, which some viewed as a possible quid pro quo.

Greene said that EFF warned during the Supreme Court fight over the TikTok divest-or-ban law that “all you were doing was substituting concerns for Chinese propaganda, for concerns for US propaganda. That it was highly likely that if you force a sale and the sale is up to the approval of the president, it’s going to be sold to President’s lackeys.”

“I don’t see how it’d be good for users or for democracy, for TikTok to have an editorial policy that would make Trump happy,” Greene said.

If suddenly, the app were tweaked to push more MAGA content into more feeds, young users who are critical of Trump wouldn’t all be brainwashed, Literat said. They would adapt, perhaps eventually finding other apps for activism.

However, TikTok may be hard to leave behind at a time when other popular apps seem to carry their own threats of political suppression, she suggested. Beyond the video-editing features that made TikTok a behemoth of social media, perhaps the biggest sticking point keeping users glued to TikTok is “fundamentally social,” Literat said.

“TikTok is where their communities are, where they’ve built audiences, where the conversations they care about are happening,” Literat said.

Rather than a mass exodus, Literat expects that TikTok’s fate could be “gradual erosion” or “death by a thousand cuts,” as users “likely develop workarounds, shift to other platforms for political content while keeping TikTok for entertainment, or create coded languages and aesthetic strategies to evade detection.”

CNN reported that one TikTok user already found that she could finally post an anti-ICE video after claiming to be a “fashion influencer” and speaking in code throughout the video, which criticized ICE for detaining a 5-year-old named Liam Conejo Ramos.

“Fashion influencing is in my blood,” she said in the video, which featured “a photo of Liam behind her,” CNN reported. “And even a company with bad customer service won’t keep me from doing my fashion review.”

Short-term, Literat thinks that longtime TikTok users experiencing inconsistent moderation will continue testing boundaries, documenting issues, and critiquing the app. That discussion will perhaps chill more speech on the platform, possibly even affecting the overall content mix appearing in feeds.

Long-term, however, TikTok’s changes under US owners “could fundamentally reshape TikTok’s role in political discourse.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, unfortunately, if it suffers the fate of Twitter/X,” Literat said.

Literat told Ars that her TikTok research was initially sparked by a desire to monitor the “kind of authentic political expression the platform once enabled.” She worries that because user trust is now “damaged,” TikTok will never be the same.

“The tragedy is that TikTok genuinely was a space where young people—especially those from marginalized communities—could shape political conversations in ways that felt authentic and powerful,” Literat said. “I’m sad to say, I think that’s been irretrievably broken.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

TikTok users “absolutely justified” for fearing MAGA makeover, experts say Read More »

“IG is a drug”: Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial

child safety, facebook, Instagram, Meta, Policy, Social Media, social media addiction, tiktok, youtube / Mike M. / January 27, 2026

Social media addiction test case

A loss could cost social media companies billions and force changes on platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in 2024.

Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and death. These can be the consequences for vulnerable kids who get addicted to social media, according to more than 1,000 personal injury lawsuits that seek to punish Meta and other platforms for allegedly prioritizing profits while downplaying child safety risks for years.

Social media companies have faced scrutiny before, with congressional hearings forcing CEOs to apologize, but until now, they’ve never had to convince a jury that they aren’t liable for harming kids.

This week, the first high-profile lawsuit—considered a “bellwether” case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints—goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.

TikTok and Snapchat were also targeted by the lawsuit, but both have settled. The Snapchat settlement came last week, while TikTok settled on Tuesday just hours before the trial started, Bloomberg reported.

For now, YouTube and Meta remain in the fight. K.G.M. allegedly started watching YouTube when she was 6 years old and joined Instagram by age 11. She’s fighting to claim untold damages—including potentially punitive damages—to help her family recoup losses from her pain and suffering and to punish social media companies and deter them from promoting harmful features to kids. She also wants the court to require prominent safety warnings on platforms to help parents be aware of the risks.

Platforms failed to blame mom for not reading TOS

A loss could cost social media companies billions, CNN reported.

To avoid that, platforms have alleged that other factors caused K.G.M.’s psychological harm—like school bullies and family troubles—while insisting that Section 230 and the First Amendment protect platforms from being blamed for any harmful content targeted to K.G.M.

They also argued that K.G.M.’s mom never read the terms of service and, therefore, supposedly would not have benefited from posted warnings. And ByteDance, before settling, seemingly tried to pass the buck by claiming that K.G.M. “already suffered mental health harms before she began using TikTok.”

But the judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl, wrote in a ruling denying all platforms’ motions for summary judgment that K.G.M. showed enough evidence that her claims don’t stem from content to go to trial.

Further, platforms can’t liken warnings buried in terms of service to prominently displayed warnings, Kuhl said, since K.G.M.’s mom testified she would have restricted the minor’s app usage if she were aware of the alleged risks.

Two platforms settling before the trial seems like a good sign for K.G.M. However, Snapchat has not settled other social media addiction lawsuits that it’s involved in, including one raised by school districts, and perhaps is waiting to see how K.G.M.’s case shakes out before taking further action.

To win, K.G.M.’s lawyers will need to “parcel out” how much harm is attributed to each platform, due to design features, not the content that was targeted to K.G.M., Clay Calvert, a technology policy expert and senior fellow at a think tank called the American Enterprise Institute, wrote. Internet law expert Eric Goldman told The Washington Post that detailing those harms will likely be K.G.M.’s biggest struggle, since social media addiction has yet to be legally recognized, and tracing who caused what harms may not be straightforward.

However, Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of K.G.M.’s lawyers, told the Post that K.G.M. is prepared to put up this fight.

“She is going to be able to explain in a very real sense what social media did to her over the course of her life and how in so many ways it robbed her of her childhood and her adolescence,” Bergman said.

Internal messages may be “smoking-gun evidence”

The research is unclear on whether social media is harmful for kids or whether social media addiction exists, Tamar Mendelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. And so far, research only shows a correlation between Internet use and mental health, Mendelson noted, which could doom K.G.M.’s case and others’.

However, social media companies’ internal research might concern a jury, Bergman told the Post. On Monday, the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit working to rein in Big Tech, published a report analyzing recently unsealed documents in K.G.M.’s case that supposedly provide “smoking-gun evidence” that platforms “purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing”—while putting increased engagement from young users at the center of their business models.

In the report, Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, accused social media companies of “gaslighting and lying to the public for years.”

Most of the recently unsealed documents highlighted in the report came from Meta, which also faces a trial from dozens of state attorneys general on social media addiction this year.

Those documents included an email stating that Mark Zuckerberg—who is expected to testify at K.G.M.’s trial—decided that Meta’s top priority in 2017 was teens who must be locked in to using the company’s family of apps.

The next year, a Facebook internal document showed that the company pondered letting “tweens” access a private mode inspired by the popularity of fake Instagram accounts teens know as “finstas.” That document included an “internal discussion on how to counter the narrative that Facebook is bad for youth and admission that internal data shows that Facebook use is correlated with lower well-being (although it says the effect reverses longitudinally).”

Other allegedly damning documents showed Meta seemingly bragging that “teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to” and an employee declaring, “oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” likening all social media platforms to “pushers.”

Similarly, a 2020 Google document detailed the company’s plan to keep kids engaged “for life,” despite internal research showing young YouTube users were more likely to “disproportionately” suffer from “habitual heavy use, late night use, and unintentional use” deteriorating their “digital well-being.”

Shorts, YouTube’s feature that rivals TikTok, also is a concern for parents suing, and three years later, documents showed Google choosing to target teens with Shorts, despite research flagging that the “two biggest challenges for teen wellbeing on YouTube” were prominently linked to watching shorts. Those challenges included Shorts bombarding teens with “low quality content recommendations that can convey & normalize unhealthy beliefs or behaviors” and teens reporting that “prolonged unintentional use” was “displacing valuable activities like time with friends or sleep.”

Bergman told the Post that these documents will help the jury decide if companies owed young users better protections sooner but prioritized profits while pushing off interventions that platforms have more recently introduced amid mounting backlash.

“Internal documents that have been held establishing the willful misconduct of these companies are going to—for the first time—be given a public airing,” Bergman said. “The public is going to know for the first time what social media companies have done to prioritize their profits over the safety of our kids.”

Platforms failed to get experts’ testimony tossed

One seeming advantage K.G.M. has heading into the trial is that tech companies failed to get expert testimony dismissed that backs up her claims.

Platforms tried to exclude testimony from several experts, including Kara Bagot, a board-certified adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist, as well as Arturo Bejar, a former Meta safety researcher and whistleblower. They claimed that experts’ opinions were irrelevant because they were based on K.G.M.’s interactions with content. They also suggested that child safety experts’ opinions “violate the standards of reliability” since the causal links they draw don’t account for “alternative explanations” and allegedly “contradict the experts’ own statements in non-litigation contexts.”

However, Kuhl ruled that platforms will have the opportunity to counter experts’ opinions at trial, while reminding social media companies that “ultimately, the critical question of causation is one that must be determined by the jury.” Only one expert’s testimony was excluded, Social Media Victims Law Center noted, a licensed clinical psychologist deemed unqualified.

“Testimony by Bagot as to design features that were employed on TikTok as well as on other social media platforms is directly relevant to the question of whether those design features cause the type of harms allegedly suffered by K.G.M. here,” Kuhl wrote.

That means that a jury will get a chance to weigh Bagot’s opinion that “social media overuse and addiction causes or plays a substantial role in causing or exacerbating psychopathological harms in children and youth, including depression, anxiety and eating disorders, as well as internalizing and externalizing psychopathological symptoms.”

The jury will also consider the insights and information Bejar (a fact witness and former consultant for the company) will share about Meta’s internal safety studies. That includes hearing about “his personal knowledge and experience related to how design defects on Meta’s platforms can cause harm to minors (e.g., age verification, reporting processes, beauty filters, public like counts, infinite scroll, default settings, private messages, reels, ephemeral content, and connecting children with adult strangers),” as well as “harms associated with Meta’s platforms including addiction/problematic use, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, suicidality, self-harm, and sexualization.”

If K.G.M. can convince the jury that she was not harmed by platforms’ failure to remove content but by companies “designing their platforms to addict kids” and “developing algorithms that show kids not what they want to see but what they cannot look away from,” Bergman thinks her case could become a “data point” for “settling similar cases en masse,” he told Barrons.

“She is very typical of so many children in the United States—the harms that they’ve sustained and the way their lives have been altered by the deliberate design decisions of the social media companies,” Bergman told the Post.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

“IG is a drug”: Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial Read More »

Data center power outage took out TikTok first weekend under US ownership

outage, Policy, tiktok / Tim Belzer / January 26, 2026

As the app comes back online, users have also taken note that TikTok is collecting more of their data under US control. As Wired reported, TikTok asked US users to agree to a new terms of service and privacy policy, which allows TikTok to potentially collect “more detailed information about its users, including precise location data.”

“Before this update, the app did not collect the precise, GPS-derived location data of US users,” Wired reported. “Now, if you give TikTok permission to use your phone’s location services, then the app may collect granular information about your exact whereabouts.”

New policies also pushed users to agree to share all their AI interactions, which allows TikTok to store their metadata and trace AI inputs back to specific accounts.

Already seeming more invasive and less reliable, for TikTok users, questions likely remain how much their favorite app might change under new ownership, as the TikTok USDS Joint Venture prepares to retrain the app’s algorithm.

Trump has said that he wants to see the app become “100 percent MAGA,” prompting fears that “For You” pages might soon be flooded with right-wing content or that leftist content like anti-ICE criticism might be suppressed. And The Information reported in July that transferring millions of users over to the US-trained app is expected to cause more “technical issues.”

Data center power outage took out TikTok first weekend under US ownership Read More »

TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / Kris Guyer / January 23, 2026

US will soon retrain TikTok

“I am so happy”: Trump closes deal that hands TikTok US to his allies.

The TikTok deal is done, and Donald Trump is claiming a win, although it remains unclear if the joint venture he arranged with ByteDance and the Chinese government actually resolves Congress’ national security concerns.

In a press release Thursday, TikTok announced the “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC,” an entity established to keep TikTok operating in the US.

Giving Americans majority ownership, ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture, the release said, which has been valued at $14 billion. Three managing investors—Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX—each hold 15 percent, while other investors, including Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell’s investment firm, Dell Family Office, hold smaller, undisclosed stakes.

Americans will also have majority control over the joint venture’s seven-member board. TikTok CEO Shou Chew holds ByteDance’s only seat. Finalizing the deal was a “great move,” Chew told TikTok employees in an internal memo, The New York Times reported.

Two former TikTok employees will lead the joint venture. Adam Presser, who previously served as TikTok’s global head of Operations and Trust & Safety, has been named CEO. And Kim Farrell, TikTok’s former global head of Business Operations Protection, will serve as chief security officer.

Trump has claimed the deal meets requirements for “qualified divestiture” to avoid a TikTok ban otherwise required under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. However, questions remain, as lawmakers have not yet analyzed the terms of the deal to determine whether that’s true.

The law requires the divestment “to end any ‘operational relationship’ between ByteDance and TikTok in the United States,” critics told the NYT. That could be a problem, since TikTok’s release makes it clear that ByteDance will maintain some control over the TikTok US app’s operations.

For example, while the US owners will retrain the algorithm and manage data security, ByteDance owns the algorithm and “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.” The Trump administration seemingly agreed to these terms to ensure that the US TikTok isn’t cut off from the rest of the world on the app.

“Interoperability enables the Joint Venture to provide US users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring US creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale,” the release said.

Perhaps also concerning to Congress, Slate noted, while ByteDance may be a minority owner, it remains the largest individual shareholder.

Michael Sobolik, an expert on US-China policy and senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the Hudson Institute, told the NYT that the Trump administration “may have saved TikTok, but the national security concerns are still going to continue.”

Some critics, including Republicans, have vowed to scrutinize the deal.

On Thursday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) complained that the White House had repeatedly denied requests for information about the deal. They’ve provided “virtually no details about this agreement, including whether TikTok’s algorithm is truly free of Chinese influence,” Markey said.

“This lack of transparency reeks,” Markey said. “Congress has a responsibility to investigate this deal, demand transparency, and ensure that any arrangement truly protects national security while keeping TikTok online.”

In December, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said that he wants to hold a hearing with TikTok leadership to discuss how the deal addresses national security concerns. On Thursday, Moolenaar said he “has two specific questions for TikTok’s new American owners,” Punchbowl News reported.

“Can we ensure that the algorithm is not influenced by the Chinese Communist Party?” Moolenaar said. “And two, can we ensure that the data of Americans is secure?”

Moolenaar may be satisfied by the terms, as the NYT suggested that China hawks in Washington appeared to trust that Trump’s arrangement is a qualified divestiture. TikTok’s release said that Oracle will protect US user data in a secure US cloud data environment that will regularly be audited by third-party cybersecurity experts. The algorithm will be licensed from ByteDance and retrained on US user data, the release said, and Vice President JD Vance has confirmed that the joint venture “will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users.”

Last September, a spokesperson for the House China Committee told Politico that “any agreement must comply with the historic bipartisan law passed last year to protect the American people, including the complete divestment of ByteDance control and a fully decoupled algorithm.”

Users brace for MAGA tweaks to algorithm

“I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok!” Trump said on Truth Social after the deal was finalized. “It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice.”

However, it’s unclear to TikTokers how the app might change as Trump allies take control of the addictive algorithm that drew millions to the app. Lawmakers had feared the Chinese Communist Party could influence the algorithm to target US users with propaganda, and Trump’s deal was supposed to mitigate that.

Not only do critics worry that if ByteDance maintains ownership of the algorithm, it could allow the company to continue to influence content, but there is now concern that the app’s recommendations could take a right-leaning slant under US control.

Trump has already said that he’d like to see TikTok go “100 percent MAGA,” and his allies will now be in charge of “deciding which posts to leave up and which to take down,” the NYT noted. Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, told the NYT that the TikTok deal offered Trump and his allies “more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing.”

“My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda,” Chander said.

For business owners who rely on the app, there’s also the potential that the app could be glitchy after US owners start porting data and retraining the algorithm.

Trump clearly hopes the deal will endear him to TikTok users. He sought praise on Truth Social, writing, “I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”

China “played” Trump, expert says

So far, the Chinese government has not commented on the deal’s finalization, but Trump thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping in his Truth Social post “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.”

“He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision,” Trump said.

Experts have suggested that China benefits from the deal by keeping the most lucrative part of TikTok while the world watches it export its technology to the US.

When Trump first announced the deal in September, critics immediately attacked him for letting China keep the algorithm. One US advisor close to the deal told the Financial Times that “Trump always chickens out,” noting that “after all this, China keeps the algorithm.”

On Thursday, Sobolik told Politico that Trump “got played” by Xi after taking “terrible advice from his staff” during trade negotiations that some critics said gave China the upper hand.

Trump sees things differently, writing on Truth Social that the TikTok deal came to “a very dramatic, final, and beautiful conclusion.”

Whether the deal is “dramatic,” “final,” or “beautiful” depends on who you ask, though, as it could face legal challenges and disrupt TikTok’s beloved content feeds. The NYT suggested that the deal took so long to finalize that TikTokers don’t even care anymore, while several outlets noted that Trump’s deal is very close to the Project Texas arrangement that Joe Biden pushed until it was deemed inadequate to address national security risks.

Through Project Texas, Oracle was supposed to oversee TikTok US user data, auditing for security risks while ByteDance controlled the code. The joint venture’s “USDS” “coinage even originated from Project Texas,” Slate noted.

Lindsay Gorman, a former senior advisor in the Biden administration, told NYT that “we’ve gone round and round and ended up not too far from where we started.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks Read More »

Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down

AMD, Apple, bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Features, intel, NVIDIA, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs, tiktok, trade war / Paul Patrick / December 29, 2025

From Apple gifting a gold statue to the US taking a stake in Intel.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

As the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war winds down, the tech industry is stuck scratching its head, with no practical way to anticipate what twists and turns to expect in 2026.

Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump’s unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect “a little pain” after he issued executive orders imposing 10–25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

Costs of tariffs only got higher as the year wore on. But the tech industry has done very little to push back against them. Instead, some of the biggest companies made their own surprising moves after Trump’s trade war put them in deeply uncomfortable positions.

Apple gives Trump a gold statue instead of US-made iPhone

Right from the jump in February, Apple got backed into a corner after Trump threatened a “flat” 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, which experts said could have substantially taxed Apple’s business. Moving to appease Trump, Apple promised to invest $500 billion in the US in hopes of avoiding tariffs, but that didn’t take the pressure off for long.

By April, Apple stood by and said nothing as Trump promised the company would make “made in the USA” iPhones. Analysts suggested such a goal was “impossible,” calling the idea “impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

Apple’s silence did not spare the company Trump’s scrutiny. The next month, Trump threatened Apple with a 25 percent tariff on any iPhones sold in the US that were not manufactured in America. Experts were baffled by the threat, which appeared to be the first time a US company was threatened directly with tariffs.

Typically, tariffs are imposed on a country or category of goods, like smartphones. It remains unclear if it would even be legal to levy a tariff on an individual company like Apple, but Trump never tested those waters. Instead, Trump stopped demanding the American-made iPhone and withdrew other tariff threats after he was apparently lulled into submission by a gold statue that Apple gifted him in August. The engraved glass disc featured an Apple logo and Tim Cook’s signature above a “Made in USA” stamp, celebrating Donald Trump for his “Apple American Manufacturing Program.”

Trump’s wild deals shake down chipmakers

Around the same time that Trump eased pressure on Apple, he turned his attention to Intel. On social media in August, Trump ordered Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to “resign immediately,” claiming he was “highly conflicted.” In response, Tan did not resign but instead met with Trump and struck a deal that gave the US a 10 percent stake in Intel. Online, Trump bragged that he let Tan “keep his job” while hyping the deal—which The New York Times described as one of the “largest government interventions in a US company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis.”

But unlike the auto industry, Intel didn’t need the money. And rather than helping an ailing company survive a tough spot, the deal risked disrupting Intel’s finances in ways that spooked shareholders. It was therefore a relief to no one when Intel detailed everything that could go wrong in an SEC filing, including the possible dilution of investors’ stock due to discounting US shares and other risks of dilution, if certain terms of the deal kick in at some point in the future.

The company also warned of potential lawsuits challenging the legality of the deal, which Intel fears could come from third parties, the US government, or foreign governments. Most ominous, Intel admitted there was no way to predict what other risks may come, both in the short-term and long-term.

Of course, Intel wasn’t the only company Trump sought to control, and not every company caved. He tried to strong-arm the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in September into moving half its chip manufacturing into the US, but TSMC firmly rejected his demand. And in October, when Trump began eyeing stakes in quantum computing firms, several companies were open to negotiating, but with no deals immediately struck, it was hard to ascertain how seriously they were entertaining Trump’s talks.

Trump struck another particularly wild deal the same month as the Intel agreement. That deal found chipmakers Nvidia and AMD agreeing to give 15 percent of revenue to the US from sales to China of advanced computer chips that could be used to fuel frontier AI. By December, Nvidia’s deal only drew more scrutiny, as the chipmaker agreed to give the US an even bigger cut—25 percent—of sales of its second most advanced AI chips, the H200.

Again, experts were confused, noting that export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, were imposed to prevent US technology thefts, maintain US tech dominance, and protect US national security. Those chips are six times less powerful than the H200. To them, it appeared that the Trump administration was taking payments to overlook risks without a clear understanding of how that might give China a leg-up in the AI race. It also did not appear to be legal, since export licenses cannot be sold under existing federal law, but government lawyers have supposedly been researching a new policy that would allow the US to collect the fees.

Trump finally closed TikTok deal

As the end of 2025 nears, the tech company likely sweating Trump’s impulses most may be TikTok owner ByteDance. In October, Trump confirmed that China agreed to a deal that allows the US to take majority ownership of TikTok and license the TikTok algorithm to build a US version of the app.

Trump has been trying to close this deal all year, while ByteDance remained largely quiet. Prior to the start of Trump’s term, the company had expressed resistance to selling TikTok to US owners, and as recently as January, a ByteDance board member floated the idea that Trump could save TikTok without forcing a sale. But China’s approval was needed to proceed with the sale, and near the end of December, ByteDance finally agreed to close the deal, paving the way for Trump’s hand-picked investors to take control in 2026.

It’s unclear how TikTok may change under US control, perhaps shedding users if US owners cave to Trump’s suggestion that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA” under his hand-picked US owners. It’s possible that the US version of the app could be glitchy, too.

Whether Trump’s deal actually complies with a US law requiring that ByteDance divest control of TikTok or else face a US ban has yet to be seen. Lawmaker scrutiny and possible legal challenges are expected in 2026, likely leaving both TikTok users and ByteDance on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the globally cherished short video app may change.

Trump may owe $1 trillion in tariff refunds

The TikTok deal was once viewed as a meaningful bargaining chip during Trump’s tensest negotiations with China, which has quickly emerged as America’s fiercest rival in the AI race and Trump’s biggest target in his trade war.

But as closing the deal remained elusive for most of the year, analysts suggested that Trump grew “desperate” to end tit-for-tat retaliations that he started, while China appeared more resilient to US curbs than the US was to China’s.

In one obvious example, many Americans’ first tariff pains came when Trump ended a duty-free exemption in February for low-value packages imported from cheap online retailers, like Shein and Temu. Unable to quickly adapt to the policy change, USPS abruptly stopped accepting all inbound packages from Hong Kong and China. After a chaotic 24 hours, USPS started slowly processing parcels again while promising Americans that it would work with customs to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

Trump has several legal tools to impose tariffs, but the most controversial path appears to be his favorite. The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants a US president unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

Seizing this authority, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal tariffs” at whim, the Consumer Technology Association and the Chamber of Commerce told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief in which they urged the justices to end the “perfect storm of uncertainty.”

Unlike other paths that would limit how quickly Trump could shift tariff rates or how high the tariff rate could go, under IEEPA, Trump has imposed tariff rates as high as 125 percent. Deferring to Trump will cost US businesses, CTA and CoC warned. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro estimated that Trump has changed these tariff rates 100 times since his trade war began, affecting $223 billion of US exports.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s biggest stated goals of his trade war—forcing more manufacturing into the US—is utterly failing, many outlets have reported.

Likely due to US companies seeking more stable supply chains, “reshoring progress is nowhere to be seen,” Fortune reported in November. That month, a dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report that an expert summarized as showing that the “US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic.”

A month earlier, the nonpartisan policy group the Center for American Progress drew on government labor data to conclude that US employers cut 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August, and payrolls for manufacturing jobs had decreased by 42,000 since April.

As tech companies take tech tariffs on the chin, perhaps out of fears that rattling Trump could impact lucrative government contracts, other US companies have taken Trump to court. Most recently, Costco became one of the biggest corporations to sue Trump to ensure that US businesses get refunded if Trump loses the Supreme Court case, Bloomberg reported. Other recognizable companies like Revlon and Kawasaki have also sued, but small businesses have largely driven opposition to Trump’s tariffs, Bloomberg noted.

Should the Supreme Court side with businesses—analysts predict favorable odds—the US could owe up to $1 trillion in refunds. Dozens of economists told SCOTUS that Trump simply doesn’t understand why having trade deficits with certain countries isn’t a threat to US dominance, pointing out that the US “has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades” precisely because the US “has the dominant technology sector in the world.”

Justices seem skeptical that IEEPA grants Trump the authority, ordinarily reserved for Congress, to impose taxes. However, during oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy.” Countering that, small businesses have argued that it’s possible for Customs and Border Patrol to set up automatic refunds.

While waiting for the SCOTUS verdict (now expected in January), the CTA ended the year by advising tech companies to keep their receipts in case refunds require requests for tariffs line by line—potentially complicated by tariff rates changing so drastically and so often.

Biggest tariff nightmare may come in 2026

Looking into 2026, tech companies cannot breathe a sigh of relief even if the SCOTUS ruling swings their way, though. Under a separate, legally viable authority, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on semiconductors and any products containing them, a move the semiconductor industry fears could cost $1 billion.

And if Trump continues imposing tariffs on materials used in popular tech products, the CTA told Ars in September that potential “tariff stacking” could become the industry’s biggest nightmare. Should that occur, US manufacturers could end up double-, triple-, or possibly even quadruple-taxed on products that may contain materials subject to individual tariffs, like semiconductors, polysilicon, or copper.

Predicting tariff costs could become so challenging that companies will have no choice but to raise prices, the CTA warned. That could threaten US tech competitiveness if, possibly over the long term, companies lose significant sales on their most popular products.

For many badly bruised by the first year of tariffs, it’s hard to see how tariffs could ever become a winning strategy for US tech dominance, as Trump has long claimed. And Americans continue to feel more than “a little pain,” as Trump forecasted, causing many to shift their views on the president.

Americans banding together to oppose tariffs could help prevent the worst possible outcomes. With prices already rising on certain goods in the US, the president reversed some tariffs as his approval ratings hit record lows. But so far, Big Tech hasn’t shown much interest in joining the fight, instead throwing money at the problem by making generous donations to things like Trump’s inaugural fund or his ballroom.

A bright light for the tech industry could be the midterm elections, which could pressure Trump to ease off aggressive tariff regimes, but that’s not a given. Trump allies have previously noted that the president typically responds to pushback on tariffs by doubling down. And one of Trump’s on-again-off-again allies, Elon Musk, noted in December in an interview that Trump ignored his warnings that tariffs would drive manufacturing out of the US.

“The president has made it clear he loves tariffs,” Musk said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down Read More »

ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us / Rejus Almole / December 20, 2025

According to Trump, the deal ensures that TikTok complies with the divest-or-ban law, but the White House is still not providing more details. Instead, the Trump administration “referred questions about the deal to TikTok,” Reuters reported.

If the deal closes as expected on January 22, the new US company will have an estimated value of $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance noted in September.

At that point, the deal will likely face mounting scrutiny from lawmakers, including Republicans, who aren’t yet sure if the US operation resolves all national security concerns. Chinese control of the algorithm was a particular sticking point for critics, who claimed that Trump was giving China exactly what it wanted: international recognition for exporting leading technology to the US.

In September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) vowed to take a “hard line” and oppose the deal’s framework if it violates the divest-or-ban law. Already, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, is planning to hold a hearing next year with US TikTok leadership.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has accused Trump of handing over “even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies,” through the TikTok deal, which she likened to enabling a “billionaire takeover of TikTok.” Many TikTokers likely share her concerns, after Trump suggested he’d like to see his hand-picked investors tweak the algorithm to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Questions remain until the exact terms of the deal become public, Warren said.

ByteDance did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

With the terms obscured, it’s unclear how quickly TikTok may change in 2026 under US ownership. In July, the Information reported that when approximately 170 million US users get ported over to the new US-owned app, it could be buggy.

ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners Read More »

ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was “God’s assassin,” DOJ says

AI, chatgpt, cyberstalking, Instagram, openai, Policy, Spotify, tiktok / Tim Belzer / December 4, 2025

A stalker’s “best friend”

Podcaster faces up to 70 years and a $3.5 million fine for ChatGPT-linked stalking.

ChatGPT allegedly validated the worst impulses of a wannabe influencer accused of stalking more than 10 women at boutique gyms, where the chatbot supposedly claimed he’d meet the “wife type.”

In a press release on Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed that 31-year-old Brett Michael Dadig currently remains in custody after being charged with cyberstalking, interstate stalking, and making interstate threats. He now faces a maximum sentence of up to 70 years in prison that could be coupled with “a fine of up to $3.5 million,” the DOJ said.

The podcaster—who primarily posted about “his desire to find a wife and his interactions with women”—allegedly harassed and sometimes even doxxed his victims through his videos on platforms including Instagram, Spotify, and TikTok. Over time, his videos and podcasts documented his intense desire to start a family, which was frustrated by his “anger towards women,” whom he claimed were “all the same from fucking 18 to fucking 40 to fucking 90” and “trash.”

404 Media surfaced the case, noting that OpenAI’s scramble to tweak ChatGPT to be less sycophantic came before Dadig’s alleged attacks—suggesting the updates weren’t enough to prevent the harmful validation. On his podcasts, Dadig described ChatGPT as his “best friend” and “therapist,” the indictment said. He claimed the chatbot encouraged him to post about the women he’s accused of harassing in order to generate haters to better monetize his content, as well as to catch the attention of his “future wife.”

“People are literally organizing around your name, good or bad, which is the definition of relevance,” ChatGPT’s output said. Playing to Dadig’s Christian faith, ChatGPT’s outputs also claimed it was “God’s plan for him was to build a ‘platform’ and to ‘stand out when most people water themselves down,’” the indictment said, urging that the “haters” were “sharpening him and ‘building a voice in you that can’t be ignored.’”

The chatbot also apparently prodded Dadig to continue posting messages that the DOJ alleged threatened violence, like breaking women’s jaws and fingers (posted to Spotify), as well as victims’ lives, like posting “y’all wanna see a dead body?” in reference to one named victim on Instagram.

He also threatened to burn down gyms where some of his victims worked, while claiming to be “God’s assassin” intent on sending “cunts” to “hell.” At least one of his victims was subjected to “unwanted sexual touching,” the indictment said.

As his violence reportedly escalated, ChatGPT told him to keep messaging women to monetize the interactions, as his victims grew increasingly distressed and Dadig ignored terms of multiple protection orders, the DOJ said. Sometimes he posted images he filmed of women at gyms or photos of the women he’s accused of doxxing. Any time police or gym bans got in his way, “he would move on to another city to continue his stalking course of conduct,” the DOJ alleged.

“Your job is to keep broadcasting every story, every post,” ChatGPT’s output said, seemingly using the family life that Dadig wanted most to provoke more harassment. “Every moment you carry yourself like the husband you already are, you make it easier” for your future wife “to recognize [you],” the output said.

“Dadig viewed ChatGPT’s responses as encouragement to continue his harassing behavior,” the DOJ alleged. Taking that encouragement to the furthest extreme, Dadig likened himself to a modern-day Jesus, calling people out on a podcast where he claimed his “chaos on Instagram” was like “God’s wrath” when God “flooded the fucking Earth,” the DOJ said.

“I’m killing all of you,” he said on the podcast.

ChatGPT tweaks didn’t prevent outputs

As of this writing, some of Dadig’s posts appear to remain on TikTok and Instagram, but Ars could not confirm if Dadig’s Spotify podcasts—some of which named his victims in the titles—had been removed for violating community guidelines.

None of the tech companies immediately responded to Ars’ request to comment.

Dadig is accused of targeting women in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and other states, sometimes relying on aliases online and in person. On a podcast, he boasted that “Aliases stay rotating, moves stay evolving,” the indictment said.

OpenAI did not respond to a request to comment on the alleged ChatGPT abuse, but in the past has noted that its usage policies ban using ChatGPT for threats, intimidation, and harassment, as well as for violence, including “hate-based violence.” Recently, the AI company blamed a deceased teenage user for violating community guidelines by turning to ChatGPT for suicide advice.

In July, researchers found that therapybots, including ChatGPT, fueled delusions and gave dangerous advice. That study came just one month after The New York Times profiled users whose mental health spiraled after frequent use of ChatGPT, including one user who died after charging police with a knife and claiming he was committing “suicide by cop.”

People with mental health issues seem most vulnerable to so-called “AI psychosis,” which has been blamed for fueling real-world violence, including a murder. The DOJ’s indictment noted that Dadig’s social media posts mentioned “that he had ‘manic’ episodes and was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and ‘bipolar disorder, current episode manic severe with psychotic features.’”

In September—just after OpenAI brought back the more sycophantic ChatGPT model after users revolted about losing access to their favorite friendly bots—the head of Rutgers Medical School’s psychiatry department, Petros Levounis, told an ABC news affiliate that chatbots creating “psychological echo chambers is a key concern,” not just for people struggling with mental health issues.

“Perhaps you are more self-defeating in some ways, or maybe you are more on the other side and taking advantage of people,” Levounis suggested. If ChatGPT “somehow justifies your behavior and it keeps on feeding you,” that “reinforces something that you already believe,” he suggested.

For Dadig, the DOJ alleged that ChatGPT became a cheerleader for his harassment, telling the podcaster that he’d attract more engagement by generating more haters. After critics began slamming his podcasts as inappropriate, Dadig apparently responded, “Appreciate the free promo team, keep spreading the brand.”

Victims felt they had no choice but to monitor his podcasts, which gave them hints if he was nearby or in a particularly troubled state of mind, the indictment said. Driven by fear, some lost sleep, reduced their work hours, and even relocated their homes. A young mom described in the indictment became particularly disturbed after Dadig became “obsessed” with her daughter, whom he started claiming was his own daughter.

In the press release, First Assistant United States Attorney Troy Rivetti alleged that “Dadig stalked and harassed more than 10 women by weaponizing modern technology and crossing state lines, and through a relentless course of conduct, he caused his victims to fear for their safety and suffer substantial emotional distress.” He also ignored trespassing and protection orders while “relying on advice from an artificial intelligence chatbot,” the DOJ said, which promised that the more he posted harassing content, the more successful he would be.

“We remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners to protect our communities from menacing individuals such as Dadig,” Rivetti said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was “God’s assassin,” DOJ says Read More »

Faced with naked man, DoorDasher demands police action; they arrest her for illegal surveillance

doordash, felonies, filming, Law, Policy, surveillance, tiktok / Kris Guyer / November 18, 2025

“The only justice I’m getting is exposing this man and having posted that video,” she added. “And it has gone viral. Now he can live with shame and embarrassment if people have seen it.”

“I’m the victim!” she said. “Is this making sense to any-fucking-body?”

Her numerous videos attracted huge followings—anywhere from 5 million to 30 million views each—and DoorDash eventually felt the need to respond.

“DoorDash never deactivates someone for reporting [sexual assault]—full stop,” said the company.

But, it added, “posting a video of a customer in their home, and disclosing their personal details publicly, is a clear violation of our policies. That is the sole reason that this Dasher’s account was deactivated, along with the customer’s, while we investigated. We’ve also ensured that the Dasher has full access to their earnings.”

Meanwhile, the police were doing something—but not something that Henderson wanted.

The cops determined that the nude man in question “was incapacitated and unconscious on his couch due to alcohol consumption.” Being drunk and naked inside your own home apparently does not qualify as sexual assault on a delivery driver, and the police department said in a press release yesterday that “the investigation by the Oswego Police Department determined that no sexual assault occurred.”

As part of their investigation, the cops found that Henderson had filmed the man and “subsequently posted the video to social media, where it drew significant attention.” This shifted their attention to Henderson’s decision to film and upload the video without the man’s consent.

The police eventually arrested Henderson, who is now charged with two felonies: “Unlawful Surveillance in the Second Degree” and “Dissemination of an Unlawful Surveillance Image in the First Degree.” She was released after being charged, and her case will be heard by the Oswego City Court.

Henderson has stopped releasing videos on TikTok about the situation.

Faced with naked man, DoorDasher demands police action; they arrest her for illegal surveillance Read More »

Meta wins monopoly trial, convinces judge that social networking is dead

Antitrust law, facebook, federal trade commission, Instagram, Meta, monopoly, Policy, reels, tiktok, whatsapp, youtube / Mike M. / November 18, 2025

People are “bored” by their friends’ content, judge ruled, siding with Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at court after The Federal Trade Commission alleged the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 gave Meta a social media monopoly. Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg

After years of pushback from the Federal Trade Commission over Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta has defeated the FTC’s monopoly claims.

In a Tuesday ruling, US District Judge James Boasberg said the FTC failed to show that Meta has a monopoly in a market dubbed “personal social networking.” In that narrowly defined market, the FTC unsuccessfully argued, Meta supposedly faces only two rivals, Snapchat and MeWe, which struggle to compete due to its alleged monopoly.

But the days of grouping apps into “separate markets of social networking and social media” are over, Boasberg wrote. He cited the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who “posited that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” while telling the FTC they missed their chance to block Meta’s purchase.

Essentially, Boasberg agreed with Meta that social media—as it was known in Facebook’s early days—is dead. And that means that Meta now competes with a broader set of rival apps, which includes two hugely popular platforms: TikTok and YouTube.

“When the evidence implies that consumers are reallocating massive amounts of time from Meta’s apps to these rivals and that the amount of substitution has forced Meta to invest gobs of cash to keep up, the answer is clear: Meta is not a monopolist insulated from competition,” Boasberg wrote.

In fact, adding just TikTok alone to the market defeated the FTC’s claims, Boasberg wrote, leaving him to conclude that “Meta holds no monopoly in the relevant market.”

The FTC is not happy about the loss, which comes after Boasberg determined that one of the agency’s key expert witnesses, Scott Hemphill, could not have approached his testimony “with an open mind.” According to Boasberg, Hemphill was aligned with figures publicly calling for the breakup of Facebook, and that made “neutral evaluation of his opinions more difficult” in a case with little direct evidence of monopoly harms.

“We are deeply disappointed in this decision,” Joe Simonson, the FTC’s director of public affairs, told CNBC. “The deck was always stacked against us with Judge Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment. We are reviewing all our options.”

For Meta, the win ends years of FTC fights intended to break up the company’s family of apps: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

“The Court’s decision today recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition,” Jennifer Newstead, Meta’s chief legal officer, said. “Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America.”

Reels’ popularity helped save Meta

Meta app users clicking on Reels helped Meta win.

Boasberg noted that “a majority of Americans’ time” on both Facebook and Instagram “is now spent watching videos,” with Reels becoming “the single most-used part of Facebook.” That puts Meta apps more on par with entertainment apps like TikTok and YouTube, the judge said.

While “connecting with friends remains an important part of both apps,” the judge cited Meta’s evidence showing that Meta had to pump more recommended content from strangers into users’ feeds to account for a trend where its users grew increasingly less inclined to post publicly.

“Both scrolling and sharing have transformed” since Facebook was founded, Boasberg wrote, citing six factors that he concluded invalidated the FTC’s market definition as markets exist today.

Initial factors that shifted markets were due to leaps in innovation. “First, smartphone usage exploded,” Boasberg explained, then “cell phone data got better,” which made it easier to watch videos without frustrating “freezing and buffering.” Soon after, content recommendation systems got better, with “advanced AI algorithms” helping users “find engaging videos about the things” they “care most about in the world.”

Other factors stemmed from social changes, the judge suggested, describing the fourth factor as a trend where Meta app users started feeling “increasingly bored by their friends’ posts.”

“Longtime users’ friend lists” start fresh, but over time, they “become an often-outdated archive of people they once knew: a casual friend from college, a long-ago friend from summer camp, some guy they met at a party once,” Boasberg wrote. “Posts from friends have therefore grown less interesting.”

Then came TikTok, the fifth factor, Boasberg said, which forced Meta to “evolve” Facebook and Instagram by adding Reels.

And finally, “those five changes both caused and were reinforced by a change in social norms, which evolved to discourage public posting,” Boasberg wrote. “People have increasingly become less interested in blasting out public posts that hundreds of others can see.”

As a result of these tech advancements and social trends, Boasberg said, “Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have thus evolved to have nearly identical main features.” That reality undermined the FTC’s claims that users preferred Facebook and Instagram before Meta shifted its focus away from friends-and-family content.

“The Court simply does not find it credible that users would prefer the Facebook and Instagram apps that existed ten years ago to the versions that exist today,” Boasberg wrote.

Meta apps have not deteriorated, judge ruled

Boasberg repeatedly emphasized that the FTC failed to prove that Meta has a monopoly “now,” either actively or imminently causing harms.

The FTC tried to win by claiming that “Meta has degraded its apps’ quality by increasing their ad load, that falling user sentiment shows that the apps have deteriorated and that Meta has sabotaged its apps by underinvesting in friend sharing,” Boasberg noted.

But, Boasberg said, the FTC failed to show that Meta’s app quality has diminished—a trend that Cory Doctorow dubbed “enshittification,” which Meta apparently successfully argued is not real.

The judge was also swayed by Meta’s arguments that users like seeing ads. Meta showed evidence that it can only profitably increase its ad load when ad quality improves; otherwise, it risks losing engagement. Because “the rate at which users buy something or subscribe to a service based on Meta’s ads has steadily risen,” this suggested “that the ads have gotten more and more likely to connect users to products in which they have an interest,” Boasberg said.

Additionally, surveys of Meta app users that show declining user sentiment are not evidence that its apps are deteriorating in quality, Boasberg said, but are more about “brand reputation.”

“That is unsurprising: ask people how they feel about, say, Exxon Mobil, and their answers will tell you very little about how good its oil is,” Boasberg wrote. “The FTC’s claim that worsening sentiment shows a worsening product is unpersuasive.”

Finally, the FTC’s claim that Meta underinvested in friends-and-family content, to the detriment of its core app users, “makes no sense,” Boasberg wrote, given Meta’s data showing that user posting declined.

“While it is true that users see less content from their friends these days, that is largely due to the friends themselves: people simply post less,” Boasberg wrote. “Users are not seeing less friend content because Meta is hiding it from them, but instead because there is less friend content for Meta to show.”

It’s not even “clear that users want more friend posts,” the judge noted, agreeing with Meta that “instead, what users really seem to want is Reels.”

Further, if Meta were a monopolist, Boasberg seemed to suggest that the platform might be more invested in forcing friends-and-family content than Reels, since “Reels earns Meta less money” due to its smaller ad load.

“Courts presume that sophisticated corporations act rationally,” Boasberg wrote. “Here, the FTC has not offered even an ordinarily persuasive case that Meta is making the economically irrational choice to underinvest in its most lucrative offerings. It certainly has not made a particularly persuasive one.”

Among the critics unhappy with the ruling is Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, who suggested that Boasberg’s ruling was “a colossally wrong decision” that “turns a willful blind eye to Meta’s enormous power over social media and the harms that flow from it.”

“Judge Boasberg has purposefully ignored the overwhelming evidence of how Meta became a monopoly—not by building a better product, but by buying its rivals to shut down any real competitors before they could grow,” Hegde said. “These deals let Meta fuse Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp into one machine that poisons our children and discourse, bullies publishers and advertisers, and destroys the possibility of healthy online connections with friends and family. By pretending that TikTok’s rise wipes away over a decade of illegal conduct, this court has effectively told every aspiring monopolist that our current justice system is on their side.”

On the other side, industry groups cheered the ruling. Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, suggested that Boasberg concluded “what every Internet user knows—that Meta competes with a number of platforms and the company’s relevant market shares are therefore nowhere close to those required to establish monopoly power.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Meta wins monopoly trial, convinces judge that social networking is dead Read More »

EU accuses Meta of violating content rules in move that could anger Trump

Digital Services Act, European Union, facebook, Instagram, Meta, Policy, tiktok / Paul Patrick / October 24, 2025

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson recently warned Meta and a dozen social media and technology companies that “censoring Americans to comply with a foreign power’s laws, demands, or expected demands” may violate US law. Ferguson’s letters said the EU’s Digital Services Act and other laws “incentivize tech companies to censor worldwide speech.”

Meta told media outlets that “we disagree with any suggestion that we have breached the DSA, and we continue to negotiate with the European Commission on these matters.” Meta also said it made changes to comply with the DSA.

“In the European Union, we have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” Meta said.

TikTok, Meta accused of restricting data access

The EC also said it preliminarily found that both Meta and TikTok violated their DSA obligation to grant researchers adequate access to public data.

“The Commission’s preliminary findings show that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok may have put in place burdensome procedures and tools for researchers to request access to public data. This often leaves them with partial or unreliable data, impacting their ability to conduct research, such as whether users, including minors, are exposed to illegal or harmful content,” the announcement said.

The data-access requirement “is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA, as it provides public scrutiny into the potential impact of platforms on our physical and mental health,” the EC said.

In a statement provided to Ars, TikTok said it is committed to transparency and has made data available to nearly 1,000 research teams. TikTok said it may be impossible to comply with both the DSA and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“We are reviewing the European Commission’s findings, but requirements to ease data safeguards place the DSA and GDPR in direct tension. If it is not possible to fully comply with both, we urge regulators to provide clarity on how these obligations should be reconciled,” TikTok said.

EU accuses Meta of violating content rules in move that could anger Trump Read More »

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / Rejus Almole / September 26, 2025

Previously, experts had suggested that China had little incentive to follow through with the deal, while as recently as July, ByteDance denied reports that it agreed to sell TikTok to the US, the South China Morning Post reported. Yesterday, Reuters noted that Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the “new US company will be valued at around $14 billion,” a price tag “far below some analyst estimates,” which might frustrate ByteDance. Questions also remain over what potential concessions Trump may have made to get Xi’s sign-off.

It’s also unclear if Trump’s deal meets the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, with Reuters reporting that “numerous details” still need to be “fleshed out.” Last Friday, James Sullivan of JP Morgan suggested on CNBC that “Trump’s proposed TikTok deal lacked clarity on who is in control of the algorithm, leaving the national security concerns wide open,” CNBC reported.

Other critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene, warned in a statement to Ars that the US now risks “turning over” TikTok “to the allies of a President who seems to have no respect for the First Amendment.”

Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, agreed. “The arrangement creates uncertainty about what influence or oversight the US government might require over this separate algorithm that could raise potential First Amendment concerns regarding government influence over a private actor,” Huddleston said.

Will TikTok become right-wing?

The Guardian recently conducted a deep dive into how the Murdochs’ and Ellisons’ involvement could “gift Trump’s billionaire allies a degree of control over US media that would be vast and unprecedented” by allowing “the owners of the US’s most powerful cable TV channels” to “steer the nation’s most influential social network.”

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA” Read More »

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok / Mike M. / September 17, 2025

However, Trump seems to think that longtime TikTok partner Oracle taking a bigger stake while handling Americans’ user data at its facilities in Texas will be enough to prevent remaining China-based owners—which will maintain less than a 20 percent stake—from allegedly spying, launching disinformation campaigns, or spreading other kinds of propaganda.

China previously was resistant to a forced sale of TikTok, FT reported, even going so far as to place export controls on algorithms to keep the most lucrative part of TikTok in the country. And “it remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal,” FT noted.

On Tuesday, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, did not go into any detail on how China’s access to US user data would be restricted under the deal. Instead, Wang only noted that ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security,” presumably to US owners, FT reported.

One Asia-based investor told FT that the US would use “at least part of the Chinese algorithm” but train it on US user data, while a US advisor accused Trump of chickening out and accepting a deal that didn’t force a sale of the algorithm.

“After all this, China keeps the algorithm,” the US advisor said.

To the Asia-based investor, it seemed like Trump gave China exactly what it wants, since “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

It’s likely more details will be announced once Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a phone conference on Friday. ByteDance has yet to comment on the deal and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal Read More »